Post

between passkeys and webp i’m starting to think that software consumers just hate good things

weeder@weeder.bsky.social

Nobody ever explained to me what a passkey is or how they work. Websites just started asking me for passkeys like it's something we talked about.

To some extent, its an understandable distrust of everything big tech, on the other hand its a lack of curiosity and care about learning what things even are.

Many people also _refuse_ to just lookup what a passkey is.... and probably would be just as annoyed if given a ten page explanation! And that's not by some personal failing of theirs, but because many parts of our society when this!

It's born out of a societal shunning of curiosity paired with a general i-cant-give-a-fuck-anymore about every new thing the tech world throws at people. It is at the same time quite understandable and _very_ harmful. Like, people get hit with wave after wave of bullshit!

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Blockchain!!! Metaverse!!!! GenAI!!!!! All of it sold as the best thing ever, get on or get left behind, all of it scummy and more often then not harmful to most people. So of course, when any _new_ thing comes around, the gut reaction is: "oh no hot this shit again."

This is made worse by our societies problematic tendency to just treat high tech as magic. 'It just works like that' and such. There is a systematic lack of computer science knowledge made available for the general public's consumption.

And that which is easily found, is more of then not, the marketing pitch for something that people actively (and for good reason!) do not want! That sort of document also always doesn't explain things properly, because then it would be transparently bullshit.

No 'crypto will replace fiat currency!!!' type content will ever actually lead to the general public understanding what cryptography _is_. it also leads to a distrust of the term. If i explain a passkey as as 'photographically secured login method,' many are going to think 'blockchain.'